(1984, b/w; English and Hungarian) Arriving in New York City from Budapest, Eva (Eszter Balint) walks, carrying a suitcase and a shopping bag and a tape recorder (playing "I Put a Spell on You" by Screaming Jay Hawkins) from the airport to her cousin's studio apartment. Willie (John Lurie, who wrote music for the soundtrack) receives a call from Aunt Lotte in Cleveland that his cousin is arriving today and that Eva will need to stay with him for ten days until she gets out of the hospital. Displeased with this sudden interruption of his life, Willie greets Eva by saying: "While you're here, only English."

The room has a bed and a daybed; Eva gets the daybed. He warns his headstrong cousin about the dangers of the city; she replies that she can handle herself well enough. As he's eating a TV dinner, after asking what it is, she declines ("Doesn't look like meat"); he points out: "I don't even have to wash the dishes."

Willie's pal Eddie (Richard Edson) drops by, comments on Eva's being cute, and then leaves with Willie for the horse track, wanting to bring Eva along (negative says Willie). Watching a football game on TV, Willie tries to explain but Eva says: "I think this game is a little stupid." Observing the filthiness of the floor, Eva uses Willie's vacuum cleaner ("Hasn't been used in years"); what she doing he tells her is called "choking the alligator."

When she brings home cans of food and a carton of Chesterfields without having any money, Willie's impressed: "You're all right." Before she departs by bus for Cleveland, he buys her an ugly dress, which she tosses into a street trashcan.

In a sequence of brief cinematic "snapshots" (many of which have little or no apparent action), director/writer Jim Jarmusch lays out a photographic joke like cards pulled from a deck one at a time and set on the table. Willie and Eddie make their living playing cards and betting on horses. After swindling three guys at poker, they drive to Cleveland in Eddie's friend's car.

"I thought you was an American," says Eddie. "I'm as American as you are," Willie answers. In Cleveland during a snowstorm with not much to do, they go out to the movies with Eva and her boyfriend Billy (putting her between them away from Billy and eating his popcorn), play cards with Aunt Lotte (who wins every hand), and view frozen Lake Erie, before departing for Florida with Eva, as Aunt Lotte curses Willie: "You son of a bitch."

On their way to Miami they stop at a motel; Eva wakes in the morning alone. Willie and Eddie return from the dog races with Willie seething at Eddie's having "a feeling" about the greyhounds. With almost all the money lost, Eva asks: "What are we going to do now?"

The boys take off for the horse track, again leaving Eva behind. She puts on her hat and coat for a stroll where a guy, mistaking her for someone else, hands her a thick envelope and hurries off. Leaving Willie a note, she heads for the airport where the only flight to Europe for the day is to Budapest. As Eddie waits as Willie instructed at the car, he watches the plane take off: "I had a bad feeling. Whaddaya gonna do in Budapest?"

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